Divers Find A Lost Camera In The Middle Of The Ocean, And The Owner Tells A Harrowing Tale

Most of the time, when we drop something valuable into the ocean, we can pretty much assume it’s gone forever (we’ll never forgive you, Rose). Not only is it difficult to locate items in ever-changing tides and currents, but over time, the seawater can severely eat away at the object.

So what makes this story remarkable is not that a valuable piece of electronic equipment once deemed lost at sea was recovered, but that it actually still worked—and what it showed shocked everyone.

A team from the marine ecology department at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada conducted a research dive on May 13, 2014. The students hoped to study the waters off the coast of Bamfield, near Vancouver Island’s west coast.

Also on the boat was Côté’s co-professor Siobhan Gray of Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre. It was Gray who brought the camera back to land. She was as fascinated by the camera itself as she was with the fauna that had been growing on it.

There were still plenty of videos and photos in the eight-gigabyte Lexar Platinum II card, dating back to July 30, 2012. Most of them were pictures of people at various get-togethers, like a family reunion.

Soon after, on May 21, 2014, Burgoyne connected with Gray. “He was thrilled,” she said. “He says when he got off the phone with the Coast Guard him and his wife were laughing a great deal, and mentioned how lucky he was.”

Being reunited with his camera was important for Burgoyne, because the photos didn’t depict just any ordinary family reunion. In fact, many of them were taken as his family buried his deceased mother’s ashes. He also remembered how he almost died himself on that fateful night.